


Shared Spaces

by ghoulaesthetics



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: AU, F/M, as in there's no ghouls and everyone can be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 01:51:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6100894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulaesthetics/pseuds/ghoulaesthetics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amon has his solitary morning routine. He's used to it. It works for him. </p><p>Doesn't take much more than a new face to throw him off, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Spaces

Amon Koutarou enjoying coming to the twenty four hour gym near his apartment. He especially enjoyed coming to said gym in the early hours of the morning, when the sun had yet to rise, and no sane person would be in the building with him. It also meant that everything would still be clean, and there was no need to worry about sitting on a still-fresh imprint of some stranger's ass sweat (he didn't consider himself squeamish, there was no room for that as a medical student, but there were certain things he'd rather avoid outside of the classroom, thank-you-very-much).

And while most gym-regulars dreaded the post-holiday season, when the place would become packed with temporary New Year's Resolution-ers, Amon didn't really mind, for two reasons. One, he was always pleased to see people making an improvement to their health, and two, no one, not even someone looking to get a jumpstart on their new resolution, was going to be here at three-thirty in the morning, so he counted himself safe from any unintentional workout partners.

He had his routine. Some light cardio and stretches to warm up, then onto the weights, and then a back to the running and cool-down stretches, and it was then he would allow himself a hot shower in the locker room (while wearing flip-flops, of course—there was no way he was risking getting infected with whatever was living in there.) By the time he had finished, an hour would have passed, he would be able to go home and get ready for the day, and the other “early” risers would just be starting to trickle in. He was rather proud of his whole solitary set up.

At exactly three-fifty-four on Tuesday, the seventh of January (Amon remembered it well because he's pretty sure it's the first time he's ever experienced anything close to a heart attack) Amon was just finishing up his round of warmups and had made his way over to the weight area, a room separated from the rest of the gym and a little off to the side. He planned to do what he did every Monday through Friday—place his water down beside his usual bench, load up the bar with his usual amount of weight, and begin to do his usual routine of lifting. Only, he wouldn't be using his bench today.

No, on this Tuesday, said bench was occupied by someone else. Someone Amon had never seen before, when he caught the first round of people coming in as he was leaving. And he was sure he had never seen her before, because he definitely would have remembered someone like this.

Stretched out on her back and holding a large barbell ( _What was that, 200 pounds? Maybe a bit more?_ ) Amon found himself staring at the way the muscles in her exposed stomach went taught whenever she pushed the bar into the air. She was focused on the weight in her hands, while Amon was looking more at the arms supporting said hands. _God, look at those_ shoulders _, that's insane._

He was so absorbed in watching her, in fact, that he didn't have enough time to properly compose himself when she finally finished and sat up, taking a much-needed swig from her water bottle. Unfortunately for Amon (well, unfortunate at present; he had no idea if or how this would benefit him at all in the future) _she_ had managed to notice him looking (rather obviously) at her.

“You do know that there's like, six other available benches, right?” she asked, lips quirking into a half-bemused, half-annoyed smile. “Or maybe you just like watching women alone at the gym, in which case, that's kind of creepy, no?”

Amon stiffened. He absolutely did _not_ expect to get caught like this. Actually, he hadn't expected to keep looking at her so long in the first place anyway, which basically ended the possibility of him getting caught at all. No, he had simply expected to go on with his routine and be done with it. Frozen in place, his mind scrambled to form words as her set of cold blue eyes drilled holes into his forehead. Brilliantly, he ended up coming out with, “You're not usually here this early.”

 _Oh, excellent,_ he thought sarcastically, _that's it, make it seem like you've been keeping track of her. If she didn't think you were creepy before, it sure as hell just solidified the idea._

She narrowed her eyes at him, still smiling, though at this point it seemed to Amon more of a threat than anything else. “And you would know that how, exactly?”

 _Shit_. “No, no, I uh, I mean that, you know, usually no one else is here this early, you know? So I wasn't really expecting to see anyone else here and I uh, got a bit startled.”

That seemed to relax her a bit. Or, at the very least, she wasn't eyeing him like she might need to deck him in the next few seconds.

“What, a guy like you, startled by someone non-threatening like me? Please,” she snorted. “If you were trying to come up with a reason why you weren't acting like a bit of a creep just now—which, by the way, you were—I'd say you just failed spectacularly.”

Amon gaped at her. Whoever she was, with her soft blonde hair, sharp eyes and even sharper tongue, she clearly had no qualms about letting him know exactly what she thought of him. Which, if he was being honest with himself, he actually kind of liked. Normally the women around him would be more subdued. It wasn't every day he met one who, in all honesty, looked ready to fight him.

_And that's kind of hot._

“'Non-threatening'. Really. You just dead-lifted... what was that, one-eighty? Two-hundred?” He chuckled, somewhat nervously. “Pretty sure you could knock me out if you wanted to.”

She shrugged. “One-ninety, actually. And you're probably not wrong about that.” She bent down to grab her towel next to the bench, giving Amon only a slight peek down her sports bra (not that he was intentionally looking, of course. But his eyes hadn't left her since he first saw her).

“Want me to try?” She offered, nonplussed.

He shook his head. “You know what, I think I'll pass on your offer, thanks. Not exactly the way I want to start my day. With a concussion, I mean.”

“Whatever suits you,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “Anyway, the equipment's all yours. I'm done here.”

“Right. Uhh, thanks.” Normally, he liked to think he was alright with making conversation in a way that wasn't completely awkward or robotic. Every time Amon opened his mouth, he was proving himself wrong.

With that, she glanced at him one more time with a look in here eyes that could be mistaken for the beginnings of fondness, (though in all likelihood, he figured it was just slight amusement at his lack of smooth conversational skills) and made her way towards the exit. He took a seat on the bench adjacent to the one she had been using (it somehow felt too weird for him to be sitting there not so long after she'd left it, it was probably still tingling with her leftover body heat and that was a distraction he did _not_ need this morning). He had the privilege of watching her leave, focused on the sound of her confident steps echoing off the walls and down to the women's locker room. He also got to watch the evident muscles in her back move as she did, and he would be lying if he said he wasn't intrigued (no doubt the rest of her was built like that too; petite and delicate, yet simultaneously sharp and jagged. He wondered if she was even capable of being soft, or if all her touches would have a strong force behind them. Of course, this wasn't something he was about to ask her anytime soon, and in all honesty, he doubted he would ever see her again. Not that he would mind if she did.)

Shaking his head, he popped in his earbuds and began to blast sound out of them. He'd have a hard time telling anyone what playlist he had on. He was only half paying attention, and he absently wondered what sort of music, if any, she liked to workout to.

He finished the rest of his morning routine without distractions, or so he told himself; in fact, he kept replaying the earlier conversation in his head, trying to recall all the little details, and as annoying as it was, he wanted more to go off of. He was seriously starting to regret not finding out her name. Perhaps then he could at least fill his lunch break with some completely innocent googling. Not in the creepy way, of course, but just to satisfy some curiosity. Besides, didn't everyone do that these days?

But he shouldn't have worried, because once finished the rest of his morning and went to collect his things from the empty men's locker room, he couldn't convincingly deny how pleased he was to find a business card with a name on it, and a personal cell number scribbled on the back. Below that, in small blocky script, it read:

_Next time we meet up, let's work on not sounding like a sexual predator to women we've just met, yeah? —Akira_

Well.

This had turned out better than he expected.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I can only assume that Amon is attracted to muscular women. If that's the case, same, Amon. Same.


End file.
